Use the Canvas grade in progress reporting

by | Aug 10, 2017 | Starfish Update, Training Update

Beginning Friday, August 18, Starfish will receive a nightly snapshot of Canvas current grades, enabling instructors to use the Canvas grade for progress reporting. This function is intended to help instructors of large-enrollment courses provide feedback to students in a more efficient manner. The Canvas current grade is only visible to instructors and TAs in Starfish.

Faculty who use the Canvas gradebook can use Starfish to set up categories of grades (e.g., Good, OK, Poor) using percentage ranges they choose. They then can select all students from a grade category and choose the appropriate feedback students in that category would receive.  The feedback is also sent to a student’s assigned academic adviser through Starfish.

Step-by-step instructions for how to use this feature in Starfish are online, as are Canvas recommendations for gradebook best practices.

This implementation adds a third Starfish method for faculty to choose among when providing feedback on student performance during the semester. Faculty can continue to select individual students and send feedback or complete a progress survey. These options allow faculty to select the feedback method that best suits their course. All three methods of providing students feedback allow faculty to meet the requirements of Faculty Senate policy 47-70 on early progress reporting.